The founding vision for The Business Café is to reduce loneliness and increase productivity. We believe in deep connecting and in community, we also believe in helping people to have the skills they need in this new world, especially the digital skills.

When I consider my failings, my vulnerability in business, many of them have been around business processes and use of technology. Setting up my book keeping apps, using Facebook Advertising, understanding CRM, the list is long.

Online we witness people asking for help all the time. The worry for many of us is that so much help is given for free. This sounds goods, and I know we all like to support each other, but support does not mean always being free with your advice. The skills you have, whether they are the skills you use directly to make money, your primary skills, or the secondary skills you have learned along the way that help you run your business. These have come from your investment in learning and has taken your time, money and energy to gain them. I am all for reciprocity and kindness, these sit way up in my values. In a perfect world, this would always be the case. BUT, we don’t live in a bartering world, try as I might, supermarkets and landlords won’t swap my skills for their rent and payments. We all need to make money, as a wise man once told me when I was giving so much away and I struggled with the dilemma of wanting to be kind but needing to feed my family… “the world does not need another poor person, it is our personal responsibility to earn and manage our income so we can be independent in society”.

We all need to respect each other’s resources, these being time, money and energy. We equally all need to find the fastest route to learning new things. The time it would take for me to learn an App if someone shared their screen with me and shared their knowledge would save me so much of my own time, money and energy. Therefore, if someone is willing to spend an hour doing this, I would like to pay them, this way I can ask, and not feel I am asking a favour. (Even better if my skills are paid for by the brand that benefits from my usage of their App! – so we’re working on this too)

Many of us supplement our income while we launch and grow our businesses; we might do Airbnb, renting out a room or our house at times, we might be an Uber Driver, a delivery driver, a receptionist. We may take on part time work while we build our dream business. I know I did, and to a certain extent I still do. I earn money in various ways while I try to get The Business Café up and running.

So how about making money with your primary and secondary skills?

If you have taken time to read this, then thank you. If you would take the survey we would ALL get some much value from this. The information we gain will enable us to build this idea into a platform, called The Skills Orchard “pick your skill”. All part of The tech platform for The Business Café concept.

Please take the survey here The Skills Orchard, 10 minutes of your time, Gail and I will value this enormously and will then turn it into something that will help each of our members either find skills or sell their skills and make their business life better.